There are only a few weeks in the year where I willingly forego sleep and Canadian Music Week  is one of them.  Being an extreme workaholic, my body has been fine tuned to run for days on short naps and liquid black gold.  Perfect prep as I spend the week traversing the city until the wee hours of the morning, savouring the music of emerging Canadian bands.

Here are my picks for this year’s festival!

Wednesday, March 10

Lee’s Palace, The Bonfire Ball-  Must see: Jason Collett , and Zeus.  Doors Open 8:30

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Jason Collett so I’m looking forward to hearing songs from his new release Rat a Tat Tat, and hopefully songs from previous albums.  I’ve heard that he doesn’t play songs from earlier releases, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.  Also excited about hearing Toronto based, Zeus, featured in this past week’s issue of NOW

Other notable mentions:  Painted Lady: The Wilderness of Manitoba (10:00pm), and Australia’s Dead Letter Chorus  (11:00pm)

Thursday, March 11

El Mocambo, Audio Blood Showcase- Must see: We Are The City  (10:00pm)

Silver Dollar, NeXT-at-CMW- Must see: Still Life Still (11:00pm), The Ghost is Dancing (1:00am)

Thank goodness The El Mo and Silver Dollar are within yards of each other—it gives me a chance to run from one venue to the other.  First to catch We Are The City and soak in their melodic, wistful songs and then make it in time for the guitar, drum and synth infused music of Still Life Still.  Night capped off with The Ghost is Dancing and their indie pop rock. 

Other notable mentions: Sneaky Dee’s, The MuseBox Showcase: Language-Arts  (9:00pm), Everything All The Time (11:00pm), and Parlovr(12:00am)

Friday, March 12

 There are too many bands on Friday night which I’d recommend…

 If you’re in the mood to stay at one place:

Lee’s Palace, Billions Showcase- Must see: Winter Gloves (9:00pm), The Russian Futurists (10:00pm), …, Plants and Animals (12:00am), and Think About Life (1:00AM)

You better be ready to dance to Montreal’s Plants and Animals, and Think About Life.  Or Else.  Sure bet that every last ounce of energy will be squeezed out on the dance floor.  Both bands hit SXSW before embarking on their North American tours.

If you’re in the mood to run all over the city:

Central, Factor Breakthrough Sessions- The Mountains and The Trees  (12:00am) [woot woot Newfoundland!  Shameless plug for the Mudderland]

The Drake Underground, Paquin Entertainment- Brasstronaut (11:00pm)

El Mocambo, Sirius Salutes Quebec- Handsome Furs(1:00am).  Note, Parlovr at 11, and Winter Gloves at 12

Horseshoe Tavern, CHARTattack Showcase- Bend Sinister  (8:30pm), and The Dudes  (9:20pm)

Saturday, March 13

Mod Club Theatre, Sirius Songwriters Café- Joel Plaskett  (7:30pm)

I’m embarrassed to say the number of times I’ve see Joel Plaskett perform.  So I won’t tell you.  But what I will tell you is that I once met him, regrettably gushed over him (shut up, I was young!!), and in the end told him he had jerk spice stuck in his teeth.  He is a perennial favourite of mine, and you should definitely check him out.  I hope it’s an acoustic set.

After his set I plan to jet over to the Indie Awards and check out the stellar line up scheduled this year.  Key acts include: Plants and Animals, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Great Lake Swimmers, and the Constantines.

Sunday, March 14

If I’m still alive by Sunday, I plan on checking out Parlovr, Young Rival and Toronto based, Born Ruffians  at the Phoenix!

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Toronto – Here is an A to Z list of bands playing at SXSW. I’ve even been kind enough to link each band to their respective myspace/website so you can check them out*. Apologies if I missed any letters, English isn’t my first language.

Antlers – I might see these guys again, although it’d be weird to see their depressing music in the clear afternoon light

Broken Bells – Danger Mouse + The guy from the Shins? Yes please. Will this album only kind of change Natalie Portman’s life?

Chew Lips – English dance-pop act has Josh blowing his load with each single they release. Might check them out.

Dr. Dog – Lo-fi folk band keeps on churning out consistently good albums. New album Shame drops sometime in April

Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now! – I had no idea Eddie Argos (of Art Brut) had a new band. It has to be great. In Argos I trust.

Fanfarlo -They cancelled their show in Toronto in December. I now get to see this London band at a warmer venue. Awesome. Luna is an amazing track.

Gay Witch Abortion – I have never heard of this band, but look at that band name.

Holy Fuck – This time, when I see them, I won’t confuse this Toronto electronic act with Polaris winning Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up

Imaad Wasif – 24 Terrorist character or Canadian born Indian singer songwriter? Check out his show and decide.

Jj – Where did these Swedes come from? From Africa to Malaga was such a good chill tune, but their new album sounds more or less the same.

Kyle Lee – Is this a Chinese Texan hip hop artist? I don’t know, but he has an Asian last name so here’s hoping.

Local Natives – They impressed many people last year, a breakout album later, these guys are ready to rule Earth.

Marina and the Diamonds – I wrote about them already, but she’ll be very good live.

Neon Indian – Hipster ratio will be off the charts for this HRO fan favorite.

Orquestra Contemporânea De Olinda – Brazillian worldly music. Gotta check out some worldly stuff for Mark

Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Shoegazey throwback band played about a billion shows last year, I didn’t catch them then. I won’t make the same mistake again. Maybe.

Quest for Fire – No idea who they are but they are the first band with the letter Q in it I see. Clever marketing yo.

Russian Futurists – Had a blast seeing them at Wavelengths despite short set. Should have equal blast at SXSW despite short set.

Spoon – Austin’s favourite band open SXSW at Stubbs with what undoubtedly will be a great performance.

Toro Y Moi – One of the first big discoveries of 2010, this dude will bring some chilled tunes to Austin.

Ume – Frank from Chromewaves really enjoys this bands live set. Who am I to argue.

VV Brown – Wonderfully talented retro pop sounding VV Brown will bring what is surely a great set to SXSW.

Walkmen – 7 or 8 years later, I still love the song The Rat

Xx – They continually seem to have bad luck, hope these guys make it to SXSW

You Say Party! We Say Die! – BC band looks to build on the success of XXXX here in Austin. Laura Palmer’s Prom..what a song

Zeus - Arts and Craft band is about to hit the stratusphere with their debut (?) album.

*(it’s also really good for search engines)

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Toronto – It’d be lazy and mildly racist to compare artist Kae Sun to K’naan just because they are both are based in Toronto with strong ties to Africa, make music with strong political overtones and have a similar worldly sounding music. But I am lazy and mildy racist, so perhaps it suits this post just fine. Born and raised in Ghana, Kae Sun was exposed to all kinds of cool African music that you and I only wish to see in movies made by Leonardo DiCaprio. Combining this learning experience with the hip hop he experienced while living in Toronto, Kae Sun proceeded to mix the two together in a magic bullet and out came an album. Lion on a Leash is a lot less frantic then the the artist I compared him to earlier and is really a solid mellow almost folkish album. He’ll be at Revival on March 10th for a CMW/F Showcase.

Oh yes.. there is also a contest. The First TWO people to retweet the answer to this simple Kae Sun Question: Where is his CMW show being held? gets a prize pack. Do it up!

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Hello, it’s me Alli, Panic Manual’s resident Courteeners fanatic. Ricky is in the process of being converted. The Courteeners are back with a new album entitled “Falcon” – released in the UK on February 22 (no info yet on a North American release date).

I expressed to Ricky this morning that even in its not-very-original, lad-rock laden sound, thoughts of this album have made me lose a small amount of sleep. I guess the main issue is that I was impressed with their debut and saw a lot of potential there. Liam Fray’s lyrics fall into a lot of cliches – entire songs about weird nights out in Manchester and shit talking about fan girls and cokeheads – but underneath that, he’s excellent at telling the listener about said cliches. The only difference I see between this album and St. Jude is that there are some songs about being far away from loved ones now that he’s traveled the world. Nitpicky differences such as the addition of keyboards and a more “produced” sound, both of which are probably due to a bigger recording budget, left me a bit confused upon first listen. Aside from these complaints, it’s really hard to ignore the fact that almost every one of their songs is damn catchy.

Fray gives his own little tributes to Morrissey, who took The Courteeners on tour with him last year and is likely responsible for anyone outside of northern England being aware of their existence. The line “Angel as you go down, I’ll let you know tomorrow/Change your plea to guilty and another day we’ll borrow” from “Will It Be This Way Forever?” clearly, well, borrows from his solo tracks “Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together” and “I’ve Changed my Plea to Guilty”. The song “Scratch Your Name Upon my Lips” could be interpreted as a reference to a line from the Smiths track “Rusholme Ruffians” – okay, that one may be a stretch.

Anyway, I don’t think I’m ever going to come to a real conclusion about this album. I want to like it but I’m annoyed Liam Fray (let’s face it, this band might as well be Liam Fray and his Courteeners) hasn’t evolved in any way, and I wonder if he ever will. Since the songs are so catchy and sometimes amusing to listen to, I’m just gonna go with the flow whenever my brain tells me to listen to it.

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Monday, March 8
Ted Leo graces Jimmy Fallon with his presence.

Tuesday, March 9
Broken Bells is visiting Letterman, I wonder if this is the first public appearance for Danger Mouse and the dude from the Shins. Either way, they’ll be rocking SXSW so this is a good preview for me. Joan Jett will be on Leno, will surely will appease his 65+ demographics.

Wednesday, March 10
The Manchester Orchestra will be playing on Kimmel.

Thursday, March 11
Colbie Caillat is on Leno. Not really music down my alley but I think she had a music video once with her in Hong Kong, so that always scores big in my books. Broken Bells continues their tour of NY but showing up on Fallon as well. Weezer is on Carson Daly. I figure they’d be too big for that show. I am wrong.

Friday, March 12
Vampire Weekend starts off the weekend (hahaha) on Fallon and Lily Allen shows up on Daly. I don’t know what she has to promote though.

There you have it, the music guests for the week.

Here is Spoon on Letterman last week:

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Toronto – When we walked into the Wrongbar at 11pm there was already a large, and somewhat weird (in composition) crowd. I thought it was because we had missed Bobby Birdman’s set (who was interesting on the strength of myspace samples – alas I was delayed by the awesome power of Mass Effect 2). But there was an even weirder girl standing alone on the stage, complete with fuzzy hair and a pair of huge white-rimmed plastic glasses. Being the ignorant snob that I am, my autonomic reflex said: “she’s a stage hand”. And then she stopped playing the intermission dance tunes; brain-churns a bit more: “she’s the DJ”. And then she started to address the crowd, introducing how she’s from Oakland and proceeded to play. Brain bellows: “You pig. She’s the DJ and also MNDR… one of the acts playing tonight. And if you write this into the review everyone will know you are retarded.” Out comes the camera of course for pictures. Let’s put a disclaimer out first: I’m no fan of electro-pop… usually. I really don’t have a lot of reference points to judge her music. To me, it’s very catchy. I’m more impressed with her voice, though, which was bright and dead-on with a synthetic quality. It sounded like we were in the studio listening to the recording just afterward. Ricky reached the conclusion that it took quite some courage to be on that stage alone, dancing to the music before a Toronto crowd that usually nod or foot-tap. So kudos to MNDR for making them exercise a bit, and Wrongbar for covering everything with a London fog at one point. Some of her more recognizable numbers: Fade to black and C.L.U.B.

Bobby Birdman helped on bass for YACHT, who came on around 12:30AM. They were energetic and I guess that was impressive seeing how I am 3 decades old. Jumping around and doing choreographed gestures/moves was a bit fresh compared to most other singing statues. But we’ve seen this type of infectious energy before – Matt and Kim showed us their boundless enthusiasm in a really great lesson in mob psychology last spring at SXSW (where the 6′2″ Texans also check you for guns even though you look like the recoil can snap your arm). YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt has a similar way of buttering up the crowd. On being ask why bandmate Claire is so sexy, the reply goes: “it’s because she’s a mirror, you sexy fiend, you”. Working the 100 or so people like dough, at one point Jona walked to the center of the crowd and asked if everyone would kneel down to his level. Then the band proceeded to run a group healing session… I really want to shout along when he said: “… if you have that professor/boss that you’re working for who’s @#$!#.” If you do not listen to the lyrics, you might find them similar to Matt and Kim. But raise your ear just slightly and words like death, hell, heaven, voodoo, and f*** everything comes into your head. That’s vocabulary that you’d never see holding hands in a park with words like energetic, enthusiastic, and indie-pop music. But maybe that’s the whole point about angst. And also Claire’s Gothic dress code gives it away. It reminds me of when I saw the Nationals – that one song Abel totally did not prepare me for how sorrowful the rest of their music sounds. To bring it back to YACHT, they are lively and coherent on stage and is an interesting band to listen to. Psychic City, the last song at this set, would probably be the definitive sample. But also check out Waste of time (personally the better song) and See a penny pick it up. More pictures following the flickr links above.

Both:

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Toronto – Flamenco rockers Rodrigo Y Gabriela made their Canadian debut at the Phoenix last Friday and delivered an exhilarating performance that left the crowd positively energized. The fans who were familiar with their work got exactly what they were looking for, and the newbies were about to learn how just how frenzied a show can be with only two acoustic nylon-string guitars. This is the type of show that you want to bring all of your friends to, because you know just how infectious the energy will be. Rod & Gab did not disappoint.

Man, this is nothing like a Pantera show. I haven’t even been head-butted [awestruck metal-head concert goer as the crowd politely moved aside to allow him to pass by]

As mentioned in our preview, Rodrigo & Gabriela are Mexican born guitarists that moved to Ireland to make it in the music business. They blend rock and flamenco into a style that’s pure octane. The crowd was an eclectic bunch: guitarists, hardcore metal-heads, latin-lovers, and their friends. Rod & Gab played a lot of material from their latest release 11:11, but finished off the show with hits like Tamacun and Viking Man from their original self-titled release.

It was a treat to see Gabriela open up a bit by telling us some stories of when they first moved to Ireland. Both guitarists swear like sailors with an endearing Irish-Mexican accent. She went onto explain that that’s just how they learned to speak English when they arrived in Ireland. The duo compliment each other extremely well; but Gabriela’s performance in particular caused the crowd’s collective jaw to drop. Her blazing right-hand combined with her impeccable sense of rhythm and sheer energy is a sight to see. There were times when she buried her head in the neck of her guitar and you just can’t help but get drawn in.

I was waiting for this show since the moment it was announced; it was exactly what I hoped it would be. I look forward to the next time Rodrigo Y Gabriela make it to Toronto. Anyone who attended is going to want to see them again, and bring their friends. It’s a musical experience that you simply feel compelled to share; and that’s the highest kind of praise.

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Toronto – So the Bonnarroo Music and Arts Festival happens every year in Manchester, Tennessee. Much like SXSW, Lollapalooza and Coachella. Actually I think nowadays, there’s a outdoor music festival somewhere every weekend. However, Bonnarroo has been slowly growing in stature over the past few years, and bigger and bigger names have been added to it. This year is no exception, check out the roster here

What is so interesting about it is the large variety of music being played at this festival – Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, Flaming Lips, Norah Jones, John Fogerty, LCD Soundsystem, Thievery Corporation, Tori Amos, MMW, Dropkick Murphys, The XX, Kid Cudi, Tokyo Police Club..Weezer. There seems to be a lot of music for everyone. Hell, Chromeo is playing with Daryl Hall. Pretty impressive.

I’ve never been to Bonnarroo, but apparently its a hipster free for all and everyone camps and its very free spirity. Reminds me of this clip. But yea, if you are planning a trip to the red states sometime in the near future, Bonnarro would be a pretty good stop.

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Toronto – Lets face it… every indie boy out there loves Zooey Deschanel. I don’t know if its the baby face, the eyes, the retro look or the fact that she looks stoned half the time she’s on screen, but there’s something undeniable about her appeal to indie kids. So when it was announced that she was going to collaborate with folk singer M. Ward (looking like a magician in the picture above) for an album, it was not a shocker that the band – She & Him became rather successful (as oppose to say..Scarlett Johansson/Pete Yorn one). The duo will be performing at SXSW to promote their new album Volume Two. Check out this single, so light and fluffy you might be able to lose weight just listening to it.

Showcases:

March 18th, 2010 – Austin, TX @ Cedar Street Courtyard (SXSW/Merge Records Showcase)
No advance tickets.

March 20th, 2010 – Austin, TX @ Auditorium Shores (SXSW/Ground Control Touring Showcase)

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In November we ran a series of comedy previews and reviews for the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. Well, the festival was a hit and the winners were chosen. The best sketch troups at the 2009 festival were Haircut, Last Call Cleveland and Accidental Company, none of which were reviewed or previewed by us here at the Panic Manual. All three troups are back in Toronto this weekend for the fests Best Of The Fest Show at the Second City on Friday, March 5th at 10:30. I spoke to a couple of the groups to see what we can expect from them at their show.

HAIRCUT
“Our sketch style is somewhat aligned with The Second City, where we were trained. Allie and I have both been hired by the company in different capacities and so I think we have been strongly influenced along that vein of creating poignant sketch comedy with a strong point of view. That being said, we do have a number of sketches that are just silly and fun, however, we do try to follow that up with something that is quite relatable to our audience. We also really try to have at least one song in each of our shows… we really love mixing it up and bringing musical comedy to our shows as well…. sometimes the songs are where we cross the line the most….. “Did she just say that?…. I guess it’s alright if it’s in a song….”-Patrick Smith

LAST CALL CLEVELAND
“It’s a high-energy show that combines live sketches, video sketches, songs and audience interaction. We go directly for the laugh and we pride ourselves on our ability to relate to audiences. You like songs? We’ll do songs. You like unattractive white men? We’re extremely unattractive and disgustingly white. You like watching people dance around in wigs they found in their basement? We do that too! The bottom line is, we know what people want to see. Along with the Last Call Cleveland videos on youtube, you can check out our web series Man In The Box.” -Aaron LCC

Here is a funny video by the group. All you jocks will enjoy it

ACCIDENTAL COMPANY
These guys are performing too. They are funny.

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